occasionally bombarding the headquarters in an irregular manner

January 08, 2012

a walt's progress

When Zeke had the cell-phone conversation with his handlers in the restaurant, I knew that his story had only two possible outcomes, and that both were monstrous. If Larry and Kyle were real, then Zeke was an assassin in the employ of a secret governmental agency that had seen fit to give him a job at a nuclear plant just as he was starting to go crazy with guilt and shame. If they weren’t real, then Zeke was not just a liar; he was a liar who was willing to engage in complicated three-way public conversations with people who didn’t exist. He was a liar with an alias and fake passports, a liar who maintained extensive stocks of boarding passes and hotel-room keys, a liar who packed a duffel bag and kept it in his house in order to further the fiction that his next mission was one phone call away. He was a liar who conflated his lies with threats so that skepticism would be conflated with fear. He was a deranged liar, and he was the security manager of a nuclear plant on Lake Michigan.

But in the general post-post-9/11 environment, engaging in complicated three-way public conversations with people who don't exist is surely a recommendation for the post of security manager for a nuclear plant.

I mean, this is just me talking here with my complete lack of HR experience, but "are you a nutter?" would definitely be on the list of questions I'd ask a prospective nuclear plant security manager. And if he started explaining to me that he'd been a mercenary sniper in Iraq and El Salvador and served in the Foreign Legion, I would take that as a probable "yes". While there are real mercenary snipers out there, there are not as many of them as there are nutters.

Bayesian reasoning innit - "given the relative probabilities of random person X from the general population being (a) a sniper, gun for hire and international man of mystery or (b) a nutter, which of these is the person in front of me likely to be?" Instead of which, presumably, the interviewer took Occam's Razor and applied it to the immediate situation only - "spinning a bizarre and elaborate fantasy would be difficult and risky; telling the truth is simple and straightforward; he's probably telling the truth".

Yes - "either mad or God". Which seems like a massive failure of imagination, apart from anything else - believing you're Jesus Christ now is crazy precisely because there's already been one. It seems like a post-hoc rationalisation to me; Lewis believed because he'd always wanted to believe, and Tolkien gave him permission.

'He wound up convincing the owners of Palisades to pay $50,000, he said, for the creation of an elite strike force from the ranks of his security guards, which he would call the Viper team.'

What is this American obsession with strike teams? It's like the way every single small-town police department has to have its own SWAT unit.

I'd say one reason he didn't get rumbled by any of the power plant staff is because too many of them wanted his stories to be true. You could go home and tell the missus, 'Yes, we're on track with the safety inspection schedule and the new IT manager is working out okay.' Or you could say 'We have a Special Forces vet who served in Iraq and reckons we need to form a strike force...'

I liked this bit about who he got to train the "Viper team," He wound up inviting Aaron Cohen, a former Israeli commando Zeke had seen giving commentary on Fox News, to come to Michigan and provide Viper training.

What is this American obsession with strike teams? It's like the way every single small-town police department has to have its own SWAT unit.

I'm reminded of something I read many years ago by a former police commissioner, IIRC, of a decidedly reformist bent who said that if you absolutely must have a SWAT team the way to do it is ask for volunteers then reject every single one who steps forward.

See Vladimir Poniakoff's memoirs, on interviewing volunteers. "I hate the Germans" - next! "It would be an honour, Sir, to serve under such a distinguished officer as yourself" - next! "I have an insatiable thirst for high adventure" - next! "I'm bored" - candidate.